Hi, everyone!
By way of background, I'm a 31-year-old male and was diagnosed about two months ago with AML. I achieved remission after my second round of chemotherapy and am now gearing up for a transplant. I have a younger sibling who is a half-match. I don't have any unrelated full matches but understand there was one 9/10 match found on the registry.
I've been speaking to two different hospitals and one is recommending using my sibling as the donor (haploidentical transplant), while the other wants to use unrelated cord blood. Does anyone have any experience with either method (or been in a situation where they've had to make a decision like this) and have any advice?
Thank you so much in advance for your help!
Hi and welcome to our corner of the Community but always sorry to see folks finding us.
So we have had a good number of folks have a haploidentical match SCT over the past years and on the whole were very successful. We have even had a 5/10 match as well. There is a higher risk of GvHD with a Haplo but I had GvHD with a 10/10 match.
We have had one cord SCT and this was our who had her SCT in the Queen Elizabeth SCT Unit in Glasgow at the start of this year and the last I heard she was doing good so let’s see if she is still looking into the Community and will pick up on your post.
My understanding with a cord SCT that GvHD can be less intense as the cells are more immature but there could be a problem with the quantity of stem cells. But a matched donor can come back and give more cells.
I have had two Allo SCT with cells from my brother (10/10) and both times we had to get him back to take more cells for a boost with a number of DLIs actually the DLIs were the main reason that my second SCT worked.
If you hit you can look at her profile and her ‘Latest Activity’ over the past year.
We also have Jane our SCT Nurse in our ‘Ask an Expert’. section where you can post questions, but she is a Volunteer Experts so allow 2 working days to get a reply.
When you feel up to it try putting some information in your profile. This really helps others when answering. It also means that you don't have to keep repeating yourself. Just click on YOUR username, select 'Edit Profile'. Put as much or as little in your profile and you can amend it at any time - you can see members profiles by hitting our forum names like Thehighlander.
We are around to wall this with you so keep your questions coming.
